The Kantian Synthesis Background

1
The Kantian Synthesis - Background
Hume only allows analytic truths as a priori. But
every event has a cause (and other important
metaphysical principles) are not mere trivial
definitions.
Hume and the Empiricists say that all knowledge
comes from experience. Hume went so far as to
make causation a purely psychological relation.
But this cant be right! Science investigates a
world in which causation is a real relation
between events.
So, the question is how is a priori knowledge of
synthetic truths possible?
But the Rationalists are not right to suggest we
are born knowing all the important metaphysical
concepts and principles I agree with the
Empiricists here.
At the same time, it cant be a (contingent) a
posteriori truth. We cant learn the concept of
causation from experience. Just seeing one thing
and then another would never teach us of a link
between them.
Rationalism has an answer. We know a priori that
every event has a cause because it is an item of
innate knowledge.
2
The Kantian Synthesis - Background
Neither experience nor reason is the sole source
of knowledge.
Knowledge requires both.
Our mind is active in structuring the raw data
(intuitions) of experience.
Programs without data cant do anything. (a mind
and its categories without experience cant
generate any knowledge).
Our mind contains categories filters that
provide the structure of experience.
An computer analogy the categories are like
programs and experience like data.
Data without programs cant be interpreted in any
way. (a category-free mind could not make any
sense of experiences).
3
The Kantian Synthesis - Background
Previously, Empiricists and Rationalists
disagreed how we could gain knowledge of reality.
But it is not. Our minds impose structure on
reality and thereby make experience and knowledge
possible.
But they agreed that reality was out there and
independent of us.
The world we can know is the phenomenal world of
appearances.
We can have informative a priori knowledge after
all of synthetic (i.e. non-trivial) necessary
truths because we can study the ways our mind
structures our experience.
So, to find out about reality we must start by
finding out about our mind before we look
outwards, we must look inwards.
The world of things-in-themselves, things
considered independently of the mind, is the
noumenal world of which we can have no knowledge.
4
The Kantian Synthesis - Background
How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible? How
do we know, for example, that every event has a
cause a priori?
Every event has a cause is true because our
experience is of a world in which every event has
a cause thanks to the structure of our mind.
A priori truths reflect the structure of the mind.
We can know this a priori because we do not need
to look outwards to the world experienced but
inwards to the structure of our mind that shapes
our experience.